This invention generally relates to the field of plastic surgery. In particular, it relates to a device used to transplant hair into the scalp of a person suffering from baldness.
The available techniques for transplanting hair are time consuming and labor intensive. Generally, a surgeon and two technicians are required to perform the transplant procedure. The current technique begins by anesthetizing the patient locally in the place where the transplant will be performed. Hair is harvested in strips from the donor site referred to as the occipital scalp. The hair follicles are then taken by a technician and cut into hundreds of small hair grafts. In the meantime, the surgeon, assisted by a second technician, will use a scalpel and cut slits in the scalp where the hair is to be transplanted. Small metal rods, referred to as dilators, are placed in the holes in the scalp to keep them from closing until the hair grafts are placed therein.
There are two types of grafts. One is referred to as a minigraft and is made up of from 3 to 6 hair follicles. The second is referred to as a micrograft and is made up of only one hair follicle. Micrografts are used to form the frontal hairline while minigrafts are used over the rest of the thinning or balding scalp.
After placement of the dilator, each hair graft, either a micrograft or a minigraft, is placed in its respective slit manually and the dilator is removed. The scalp then closes around the transplanted hair graft.
A typical patient is subjected to many hundreds of these individual hair transplant grafts. Typically the average procedure lasts about 240 minutes. Given this time period, the patient normally requires a second dose of anesthesia to maintain proper comfort. This procedure suffers from the drawbacks of being time consuming, labor intensive and not being automated.